Search Results: ACU
There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 16 July 2015
17 Comments
The media declared Pope Francis not amused after Bolivian President Morales presented him with a crucifix superimposed on a hammer and sickle. It turned out that the design was from Jesuit Luís Espinal, who was captured, tortured and killed by right-wing paramilitaries in 1980. It depicted Christ's affinity with workers and peasants. Pope Francis was more interested in the reality of a crucified people than in discussing representations of the crucified Jesus.
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RELIGION
- Neil Ormerod
- 15 July 2015
29 Comments
It is not surprising that The Australian should be leading the local pushback on the environmental encyclical Laudato Si'. What is surprising is that a Catholic priest - Fr James Grant - should be joining the chorus against the encyclical, initially in an IPA media release. His more recent contribution to The Australian is right out of the briefing notes supplied by the coal industry in its global public relations efforts to shore up its waning reputation.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
A man sets in motion an elaborate scheme to get back at everyone who has ever done him wrong. This maniacal anthology of short cinematic stories earned an Oscar nomination this year along with a bundle of other accolades in its native Argentina and beyond. The darkly comic 'Little Bomb' shows a man's life and mind unravel as he rages against the perceived injustice of a parking infringement penalty.
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RELIGION
Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI made passing reference to environmental issues. Benedict spoke of the need for protection of the environment, resources the climate in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate. But in terms of its significance, Pope Francis’ forthcoming encyclical has the potential to do for the environmental movement what Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum (1891) did for the union movement – to provide it with a powerful source of moral and religious legitimacy in the face of those forces which have sought to limit their influence.
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INTERNATIONAL
Indonesia is a country of great promise with a significant, maybe crucial, contribution to make to our troubled world. As a very large, pluralist, Muslim-majority democracy it offers a template for other societies in transition. President SBY was acutely aware of this opportunity and through his democracy forums and other initiatives did much to re-brand Indonesia in this positive light. All this good work is being undone by the anal, small-town thinking the executions represent.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 23 April 2015
5 Comments
Vera, a latecomer to the gathering, interjects. She has worked as a nurse, has had her hands warmed by the blood of the maimed and the soon-to-be-dead of both sides of the conflict. She has lost loved ones, too — a brother, a friend, a fiancé — and the grief of their loss will be with her always. But how can violent conflict ever be truly redeemed through the trauma of more violent conflict? The German soldiers who died in the war left behind loved ones, too.
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EUREKA STREET TV
- Peter Kirkwood
- 25 March 2015
7 Comments
A hallmark of Francis' papacy has been his calls for 'a Church which is poor and for the poor'. He has given new currency to the sometimes controversial concept 'preferential option for the poor', which has strong associations with Liberation Theology. Sydney theologian Rohan Curnow recently completed his PhD thesis and a book on the history and application of the 'preferential option'.
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AUSTRALIA
- Brian Stacey
- 18 March 2015
6 Comments
In 2011 the Commonwealth set aside $10 million for the NT Government to provide for dialysis patients from remote communities in Central Australia. But the funds remain in the Commonwealth’s bank account, while the need is acute. Community organisations and others including Vinnies and Caritas are helping, but it’s shameful that the needs of one of Australia’s most vulnerable groups are still unmet long after funding has been allocated.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Catherine Magree
- 03 March 2015
2 Comments
Afterwards we will sip green tea in the sitting room and I'll persuade him that his next exposé must reveal our own torn and twisted hearts straining to escape their ventricular structures in the gaping face of the world's inanimate evil.
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- Brian McCoy
- 25 February 2015
2 Comments
I have witnessed Aboriginal payback. It was in the Kimberley on an open sports oval. A young girl from the community had been found killed and I watched the community's desire to re-balance itself with the serious and public punishment of the offender. The whole community was present as the family of the deceased took it in turns to beat his back and stab his thigh. It was one of the most highly charged emotional events I have ever experienced.
At the end, after all the punishment, he fell. The nurses took him into the health clinic and he was later evacuated to hospital. After the ritual was over I remember speaking to the father of the young girl. 'I want to kill him', he said. 'But even that will not remove your pain', I replied. His hurt was raw and tangible and nothing seemed able, at that time, to even get close to healing it. Read more
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 18 December 2014
16 Comments
Shady family members who turn up uninvited, unresolved sibling rivalries, end of working year pressures. In a way they recall the organisational disarray of the first Christmas... A rocky engagement, the man discovering that his fiancée was pregnant with a child that was not his, a long march to fill in tax forms, having to give birth in a paddock and suffer an invasion from disreputable shepherds and odd foreigners.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Barry Gittins and Jen Vuk
- 26 September 2014
6 Comments
A Bone of Fact is one part love letter and two parts plea bargain. That’s how Walsh can take a stab at Catholicism one minute and the next admit that in the 'thrall' of Michelangelo’s Pieta he loses all faculties. And for someone who’s gleamed much from betting, gambling gets short shrift.
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